Lies
by gabthebomb
Summary: After her death, he sees her everywhere.


Title: **Lies**  
Summary: After her death, he sees her everywhere.

Pairing: Jack/Liz

* * *

It's been two months when it first happens.

Jack's eating breakfast, alone in an apartment that's much too quiet. Six years of dancing around, five more of them finally together (and on that fateful day when she was hit in broad daylight in front of his eyes, four minutes while he waited for the EMS to arrive).

Three heartbeats, and she was limp in his arms. They never found the cab driver.

Now, he does not think, or live, or feel. He only exists. He simply is, and beyond the control that he exercises over his professional life, there is nothing.

Until…

"How are you?"

He looks up from his plate, startled. There she sits, surveying him calmly like she's just asked him about dinner. As if today is any other day at the breakfast table.

But he knows that she is not real, that this is a figment of his imagination no matter how he may wish differently.

But she doesn't disappear. "Jack? How are you?" she asks again.

He sighs, and decides to entertain his delusion, or ghost, or whatever.

"I'm fine, Lemon."

"Come on, don't do that. You don't have to be strong."

Blue eyes meet brown. "Don't I, though?"

She smiles sadly, and vanishes.

* * *

He sleeps on her pillow until her scent begins to fade from the fabric of the case. When this happens, he throws the whole thing in the garbage and mixes himself one drink after another. He can feel her disapproval, and he ignores it.

She shows up in his shower one day. He gasps, but does not attempt to cover himself. They had five years, after all, and his naked form is not news to her; whether she is real or not.

"Hi," she says, half-smiling. The water is streaming around him. She is still on the other side of the opaque curtain, safe from the spray. He looks at her, saying nothing, until she steps out of her shoes and begins to slide down her jeans.

"What are you—?" he finally says, but she cuts him off with a glint in her eyes. "Shh."

He continues to watch as she slowly drags her t-shirt over her head, unaware or perhaps uncaring of the sweet torture that she's inflicting upon him. Her breasts are flush against her bra, teasing him until the clasp is undone and the garment falls away.

She slides the curtain aside.

When she reaches for him, he does not protest. He doubts it would have any effect either way. She gives his shaft a few quick tugs before playfully pushing him under the spray of the water; if it is hot or cold, Jack couldn't say. He closes his eyes as the water runs down his body, as she strokes him with firm enthusiasm. He can feel himself on the verge and he reaches for her to join him under the spray, but opens his eyes when he finds he is grasping at nothingness.

He realizes that the water has run cold, not because he is able to sense the temperature, but because he is shuddering. He turns off the tap.

* * *

A few weeks drift by. When he stops by Six with a request for Kenneth, the page is absent, but she sits on his desk. Her legs swing back-and-forth, back-and-forth with the girlishness that she's never quite lost in all the time that he's known her. She smiles at him as she dips her hand into a bag of Sabor de Soledad.

"Where've you been?" she asks.

He can only gaze at her, take in how her brown hair shines under the fluorescents; how her glasses are slipping down her nose just a bit. She is so young. He realizes that he has never seen her with a gray hair, and wonders randomly whether she'd dyed it or was just lucky. It is another indication of the time that has been torn from them; for now they will never grow truly old together.

She munches on a chip with raised eyebrows. Expecting an answer.

"I'm not crazy," he says to her.

He will not move in closer, will not try to make this anything more than it is.

"Of course not," she agrees, and then she's gone.

* * *

He no longer cares about weather. There's little difference between hot sun and freezing snow, for him. It could be raining, or just an empty sky. It doesn't matter. There is only the emptiness.

For a while, she doesn't make any appearances, and he finds himself wishing for such visits though he knows it is probably unhealthy. He tries lucid dreaming, and when this fails, he is about to give up. But the next day he finds her waiting for him in his office, splayed on his couch on her back with one Dankso clog-wearing foot dangling over the edge. He almost sobs at the familiarity of this scene, but holds back.

"What do you want?" he asks quietly.

She sits up and makes a slight badger face. "Huh, aren't _you_ in a good mood!"

He has missed her sarcasm.

When he doesn't reply, her face softens. Then she seems to change her mind, and smirks at him.

"Aw, lighten up. It's not so bad."

For a moment, his face slips, and he wonders at the meaning behind revealing his true feelings to an apparition.

"You were everything, Lemon. Everything that I needed. What is there for me now?"

She shrugs. "If you tried, you could move on."

"I have been trying."

"No, you haven't." Her voice takes on an angry edge, almost desperate. "Not hard enough."

"I can't," he whispers.

"You can, Jack. You can do it. You'll heal."

"I love you," he says. Not for the first time. He doesn't know what else to say.

"You know I love you, too." She winks at him. Confident that he'll listen to her. He always has, in the end.

She disappears, and he knows that this time was the last.

_He will heal. _

Jack takes some comfort in the lie.

…

_End._


End file.
